Logos Mobile Education: Our Plan for Biblical Content Instruction

Logos recently announced a new division: Logos Mobile Education (Mobile Ed). With Mobile Ed, we’re going beyond simply equipping users to do Bible study. Now we’re also providing instruction in biblical content. That announcement has generated a lot of discussion. How will we make this new goal a reality? What’s the plan?

What Mobile Ed is—and isn’t

We’re raising the bar for biblical instruction for the layperson who simply wants to learn more about the Bible and its world. Our programs will provide solid biblical training for anyone interested in local church ministry. The goal is not to create new digital books or more video tutorials for learning Logos Bible Software—Mobile Ed courseware presumes that students already have a working knowledge of Logos. Morris Proctor’s Logos Academic Training (LAT) is therefore highly recommended as a prerequisite to Mobile Ed courses.

The Mobile Ed curriculum

The focus of Mobile Ed courseware is first and foremost academic. Courses are not aimed at devotional study or small group discussion; course content extends beyond what you would encounter in adult Sunday School classes. In most cases, the content level ranges from undergraduate to seminary. Introductory courses (100 level) include content that students would encounter in a Bible college setting. Intermediate courses (200 level) are similar to first-year seminary courses. And advanced courses (300 level) have a concentrated focus, with content comparable to electives offered in seminary. Mobile Ed has also created two courses (090 level) that survey the Old and New Testaments. These courses, designed for people with limited exposure to the Bible, orient the reader to each biblical book, providing guidance as to what it’s about and what the reader can expect to encounter.

Benefits of the Mobile Ed strategy and environment

Mobile Ed courses aren’t just video courses. The most critical distinction between your average video course and Mobile Ed courseware is that Mobile Ed courses are tethered to, and make extensive use of, Logos Bible Software. With typical video courses, the video delivers all or most of the content—the video is essentially the course. But in Mobile Ed courses,video lecture material serves as the starting point for learning. Lecture videos are supplemented by screencast demonstrations that show how professors came to their conclusions and how students can use Logos to do similar research. The Mobile Ed instructional designers have prepared links to pre-loaded searches relevant to the course content. There are also guided links to reading material in the Logos digital library. All the elements of the course are delivered completely within the Logos learning environment, across platforms and handheld devices.

While Mobile Ed courses are not Logos books, they function like Logos books within the Logos environment. Students can create a collection of courses and search them for words, phrases, and references—including the spoken content in the video lecture scenes. Course transcripts are enriched with learning objectives and links into the Logos library for extended learning opportunities. Students can add course videos to their Favorites folder and track their progress with the History and Reading Plan features. They can create note files and form Faithlife groups to study with others—or use those notes in their local teaching ministry by creating a Faithlife group for their own students.

No other distance education video course has these distinctions and advantages. Mobile Ed courseware is biblical education the way only Logos could do it.